Corinda Pitts Marsh

Illusions of Honor Corinda Pitts Marsh

We fool ourselves into believing the world of college athletics is honorable. Young men and women receive a college education in return for representing the college on the field or in the arena. We protest that players learn honor, sportsmanship, teamwork skills. They grow as men and women of honor. Myth--it is a myth. Most never earn an education, but they do learn to cheat and connive--anything to win. Winning isn't the most important thing; it is everything. When sports and academics clash, the winner is always the same. Basketball is business--the stakes are high. When one college president decides to have a championship regardless of the price, the dominoes begin to fall around him until he is toppled by his own game. Unfortunately, his fall brings down others who have no skin in the game. Choosing honor in a dishonorable world is a dangerous play. All the members of the president's team were not willing players, but all were losers. This is the story of one insider's observations and reactions. While the story is fiction and characters have been changed for obvious reasons, the events it is based on are not. Coaches at New Mexico State University wrote English essays for players and sent them to other colleges for basketball players they would recruit. NCAA Reports of this scandal are public record, but this is the story of one of the players who never got caught. Their secret has remained hidden for 20 years, until all threat of reprisal for revealing the truth was gone. Fingers of this corruption spread out across the country.